Thread: Lost weekend: How Trump’s time at his golf club hurt the response to Maria

Lost weekend: How Trump’s time at his golf club hurt the response to Maria

Puerto Rico is devastated in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

After the Category 4 hurricane slammed into Puerto Rico, many of the more than 3.4 million U.S. citizens in the territory were still without adequate food, water and fuel. Flights off the island were infrequent, communications were spotty and roads were clogged with debris.

By Abby Phillip, Ed O'Keefe, Nick Miroff and Damian Paletta September 29 at 8:07 PM

At first, the Trump administration seemed to be doing all the right things to respond to the disaster in Puerto Rico.

As Hurricane Maria made landfall on Wednesday, Sept. 20, there was a frenzy of activity publicly and privately. The next day, President Trump called local officials on the island, issued an emergency declaration and pledged that all federal resources would be directed to help.

But then for four days after that — as storm-ravaged Puerto Rico struggled for food and water amid the darkness of power outages — Trump and his top aides effectively went dark themselves.

Trump jetted to New Jersey that Thursday night to spend a long weekend at his private golf club there, save for a quick trip to Alabama for a political rally. Neither Trump nor any of his senior White House aides said a word publicly about the unfolding crisis.

Trump did hold a meeting at his golf club that Friday with half a dozen Cabinet officials — including acting Homeland Security secretary Elaine Duke, who oversees disaster response — but the gathering was to discuss his new travel ban, not the hurricane. Duke and Trump spoke briefly about Puerto Rico but did not talk again until Tuesday, an administration official said.

Administration officials would not say whether the president spoke with any other top officials involved in the storm response while in Bedminster, N.J. He spent much of his time over those four days fixated on his escalating public feuds with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with fellow Republicans in Congress and with the National Football League over protests during the national anthem.

In Puerto Rico, meanwhile, the scope of the devastation was becoming clearer. Virtually the entire island was without power and much of it could be for weeks, officials estimated, and about half of the more than 3 million residents did not have access to clean water. Gas was in short supply, airports and ports were in disrepair, and telecommunications infrastructure had been destroyed.

Federal and local officials said the lack of communications on the island made the task of assessing the widespread damage far more challenging, and even local officials were slow to recognize that for this storm, far more help would be necessary.

“I don’t think that anybody realized how bad this was going to be,” said a person familiar with discussions between Washington and officials in Puerto Rico. “Quite frankly, the level of communications and collaboration that I’ve seen with Irma and now Maria between the administration, local government and our office has been unprecedented.”

“Whether that’s been translated into effectiveness on the ground, that’s up for interpretation,” the person added.

Unlike what they faced after recent storms in Texas and Florida, the federal agencies found themselves partnered with a government completely flattened by the hurricane and operating with almost no information about the status of its citizens. The Federal Emergency Management Agency struggled to find truck drivers to deliver aid from ports to people in need, for example.

“The level of devastation and the impact on the first responders we closely work with was so great that those people were having to take care of their families and homes to an extent we don’t normally see,” said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want his statement to be interpreted as criticism of authorities in Puerto Rico. “The Department of Defense, FEMA and the federal government are having to step in to fulfill state and municipal functions that we normally just support.”

Even though local officials had said publicly as early as Sept. 20, the day of the storm, that the island was “destroyed,” the sense of urgency didn’t begin to penetrate the White House until Monday, when images of the utter destruction and desperation — and criticism of the administration’s response — began to appear on television, one senior administration official said.

“The Trump administration was slow off the mark,” said Rep. Darren Soto (D), the first Florida lawmaker of Puerto Rican descent elected to Congress. “. . . We’ve invaded small countries faster than we’ve been helping American citizens in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.”

Trump’s public schedule Monday was devoid of any meetings related to the storm, but he was becoming frustrated by the coverage he was seeing on TV, the senior official said.

At a dinner Monday evening with conservative leaders at the White House, Trump opened the gathering by briefly lamenting the tragedy unfolding in Puerto Rico before launching into a lengthy diatribe against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over his opposition to the Republicans’ failed health-care bill, according to one attendee.

After the dinner, Trump lashed out on social media. He blamed the island’s financial woes and ailing infrastructure for the difficult recovery process. He also declared that efforts to provide food, water and medical care were “doing well.”

On the ground in Puerto Rico, nothing could be further from the truth. It had taken until Monday — five days after Maria made landfall — for the first senior administration officials from Washington to touch down to survey the damage firsthand. And only after White House Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert and FEMA Director Brock Long returned to Washington did the administration leap into action.

Trump presided over a Situation Room meeting on the federal and local efforts Tuesday, and late in the day, the White House added a Cabinet-level meeting on Hurricane Maria to the president’s schedule.

White House aides say the president was updated on progress in the recovery efforts through the weekend, and an administration official said Vice President Pence talked with Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress, Jenniffer González-Colón, over the weekend. Trump spoke to Gov. Ricardo Rosselló after Maria made landfall and again Tuesday; he spoke to González-Colón for the first time Wednesday.

The administration still fumbled at key moments after stepping up its response. A week after landfall, Trump still had not waived the Jones Act, a law that barred foreign-flagged vessels from delivering aid to Puerto Rico. Such a waiver had been granted for previous hurricanes this year.

Asked why his administration had delayed in issuing the waiver, Trump said Wednesday that “a lot of shippers and . . . a lot of people that work in the shipping industry” didn’t want it lifted.

“If this is supposed to be the ‘drain the swamp’ president, then don’t worry about the lobbyists and do what’s needed and waive the act,” said James Norton, a former deputy assistant homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush who oversaw disaster response for the agency. “We’re talking about people here.”

Trump waived the law Thursday.

After getting good marks from many for his administration’s response to Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, Trump has struggled to find the right tone to address the harsher reviews after Maria. He has repeatedly praised his administration’s actions, telling reporters Friday that it has “been incredible the results that we’ve had with respect to loss of life” in Puerto Rico. The official death toll is 16, a number that is expected to rise.

“We have done an incredible job considering there’s absolutely nothing to work with,” Trump said as he was leaving the White House for another weekend at Bedminster.

At the same time, he said that “the government of Puerto Rico will have to work with us to determine how this massive rebuilding effort . . . will be funded and organized,” and he referred to the “tremendous amount of existing debt” on the island.

Trump’s top disaster-response aides have blanketed television in recent days in an attempt to reset the narrative. Duke, the acting DHS secretary, told reporters Thursday outside the White House that Puerto Rico was a “good news story.” The comment seemed to unleash pent-up fury from at least one local official, after days of offering praise to the Trump administration in an apparent effort to secure more federal help.

“I am asking the president of the United States to make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives,” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said at a news conference Friday. “I am done being polite, I am done being politically correct. I am mad as hell. . . . We are dying here. If we don’t get the food and the water into the people’s hands, we are going to see something close to a genocide.”

Trump’s rosy assessment of the federal response has also contrasted sharply with the comments of federal officials on the ground.

Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, who was named this week to lead recovery efforts, told reporters Friday that there were not enough people and assets to help Puerto Rico combat what has become a humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the storm.

The military has significantly stepped up its mobilization to the island commonwealth, with dozens more aircraft and thousands of soldiers bringing “more logistical support” to a struggling recovery effort that has been delayed by geographical and tactical challenges.

Buchanan said that Defense Department forces have been in place since before the storm lashed Puerto Rico but that the arrival of additional resources is part of the natural shift in operations. Sometimes troops act ahead of the local government to meet needs, but they were also waiting for an “actual request” from territorial officials to bring in more resources. Buchanan will bring together land forces, including the Puerto Rico National Guard, to begin pushing into the interior of the island, where aid has been slowed by washed-out roads and difficult terrain. The Navy previously led the military response in Puerto Rico.

“No, it’s not enough, and that’s why we are bringing a lot more,” the three-star general said of the resources in Puerto Rico thus far.

Arelis R. Hernández in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and John Wagner and Joel Achenbach in Washington contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.9bf55e505a45

Just more evidence that Trump has to oversee everything himself. This Puerto Rico situation is really a huge mess. Not only is the government broke, the utility that provides all the power to the Island is broke, plus unlike the people in Texas and Florida, the people of Puerto Rico refused to show up for their jobs like the police to maintain security, truck drivers to deliver the supplies, even power company workers. There's also a several stories that the power company in Puerto Rico is in debt, corrupt and cheated the people with faulty and bad electric lines.

It's interesting to see the differences in reactions to Maria between the people of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands were hit much harder than Puerto Rico and they've not complained or whined at all and the press barely mentions them.

It's a huge job ahead as to what has to be done with Puerto Rico, but it's basically a rebuilding project and there's someone in a very high place in our country who knows how to do that, really well.

One of the best new regulations that this administration could offer to the United States is burying electric lines, which would not only save lost electricity, it's safer, these buried lines are more reliable, and you don't lose line power due to wind, ice, snow, etc. It would significantly reduce the issues associated with power loss during bad weather and natural disasters. Plus it makes your neighborhoods and cities so much more attractive.

One of the best new regulations that this administration could offer to the United States is burying electric lines, which would not only save lost electricity, it's safer, these buried lines are more reliable, and you don't lose line power due to wind, ice, snow, etc. It would significantly reduce the issues associated with power loss during bad weather and natural disasters. Plus it makes your neighborhoods and cities so much more attractive.

Why don't we bury power lines in the U.S.?


SAMI GROVERSeptember 11, 2017, 12 p.m.

Power lines are often damaged by trees during powerful storms like hurricanes. (Photo: KMH Photo Video/Shutterstock)


More than once during a storm — as I've fretted over the contents of my freezer or my lack of access to Netflix — I've found myself asking:

Why doesn't the U.S. bury its power lines?

It turns out I'm not alone in wondering.

Burying power lines is expensive

The simple answer is that burying power lines is considerably more expensive than you might think. As reported by CNN, North Carolina's Utility Commission looked into burying power lines after more than 2 million homes were left without electricity in the storms of 2002. Th commission found that the project would cost $41 billion, take 25 years to complete, and would require that customers' electricity rates nearly double to pay for it — leading the commission to conclude that it would be "prohibitively expensive."

Access and longevity are a concern

The upfront cost of "undergrounding" power lines isn't the only downside. According to this Wikipedia entry on the practice, other disadvantages include a shorter shelf life for cables, the danger of the cables being accidentally damaged by road construction or other digging, vulnerability to floods and the fact that if damage does occur, repairs can take considerably longer than what's needed for overhead cables.

That said, there are advantages. Some communities advocate burying cables for aesthetic reasons. My hometown of Durham, North Carolina, has chopped down or severely pruned its beautiful street trees because they interfere with power lines. (Apparently, when Durham's many willow oaks were planted, city planners assumed power lines would eventually be buried.)

Undergrounding: Long-term investment and economic stimulus

Commentator David Frum has made a strong case for burying power lines, arguing that utilities' cost estimates are over-inflated (a U.K. study suggested a premium of five times the cost of overhead lines, not 10); that resilience to storms is increasingly important in a changing climate; and that because U.S. cities are becoming more dense, we can expect the cost per mile to come down. Frum also argued that undergrounding is the kind of job-creating initiative that governments should undertake during an economic downturn, taking advantage of low interest rates to upgrade our infrastructure, shore up our communities against the threat of climate change and put many Americans back to work. (Indeed, burying power lines is one of the ways cities are preparing themselves for climate change.)

It seems unlikely that large-scale undergrounding will take off anytime soon, at least not in existing communities. But burying power lines in new communities is a lot more commonplace, and considerably cheaper than replacing existing infrastructure. It may be that we'll gradually see a shift to underground lines over the decades, but for now, I think we should all plan to do a better job of preparing for the next power outage.

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/cl...ts-power-lines

There is no difference between burying electric cables than burying natural gas lines which they run all through existing communities all the time. There's new technology to bury cable and underground lines. It's not the burying of the lines that is the expense, it's the ground based transformers that are used with buried cable that's the biggest expense. You wouldn't need to do this in remote rural areas, you would do it in larger towns and cities, i. e. populated areas.

Any claim that buried electric lines would double utility rates is an outright falsehood. I could see a small assessment for the change on a monthly utility bill until your share is paid off, but it wouldn't be for 25 years, maybe 2 years at the most and wouldn't and shouldn't have a thing to do with your utility rates. It's an improvement that benefits you as a home or business owner and you should pay for it as a specific charge, not have it rolled into your utility rates. You could decide whether you want to pay the assessment upfront lump sum or over a 2 year period.

The house I live in is in a huge neighborhood with buried lines and ground based transformers. It's beautiful. During a massive hurricane about 18 years ago that flooded the eastern half of our state and knocked power out for weeks in many areas, I lost power at 3 am and it was back on before noon. The areas that didn't have buried lines lost power for at least a week and some lost it for 2 weeks. Fallen power lines blocked roads and streets that delayed getting everything moving again for weeks, because it wasn't safe for people to get out there with chain saws to chop up and remove the trees and debris because of the fallen power lines in the mix.

I pay the same utility rate with my buried lines and ground-based transformers as people who live in older areas stuck with pole lines and pole-based transformers. How is that fair? Well, because the developer paid for the transformers when the homes were built back in the 80's. The sooner they start, the sooner it will be done.

Furthermore, in 2002, North Carolina was a poor example for such a study because 98 counties of the 100 counties in North Carolina were municipal owned utilities who profit from utility rates and were unregulated. So any NC Utilities Commission study was done solely for the benefit of Progress Energy that served Raleigh and Wake County and Duke Power that served the Charlotte and Mecklenberg County. Things are different now. Duke bought Progress Energy and then acquired controlling interest in the 98 municipal utilities. A wonderful thing, so Duke Power needs to start burying lines and working out arrangements for the cost of the transformers as soon as possible in their entire service area. Property owners who own the property but where the tenant pays the utilities were be more than delighted to have buried lines at their property and would probably pay for it upfront or over the period of a year to 18 months. They would pass the investment cost through to the tenants who would pay a nominal increase in rent because the property is now improved.

Also buried electric lines are much more efficient, using much less energy because they are not only insulated by the cable covering and underground line tubes, they are further insulated by the ground itself.

Trump Administration should look into this and make recommendations especially in coastal and near coastal areas.

Why most cities don’t bury power lines

By Brad Plumer July 25, 2012

In late June, a freakish and powerful "derecho" storm in the Washington, D.C., area knocked out a bunch of power lines and left more than a million homes without electricity for several days (weeks, in some cases). Soon enough, local officials began calling on the local utility, Pepco, to bury its power lines underground in order to avoid such outages.

There's got to be a better way ... right? (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

But right away, as Sommer Mathis of Atlantic Citiesexplained, they ran into a familiar obstacle: It's expensive to bury power lines in the nation's capital. A 2010study (pdf) found that the D.C. area could prevent more than 1,000 outages a year by burying all of its overhead lines. But it would cost $5.8 billion, adding $226 to customers' monthly electricity bills for the next 10 years. Even a partial plan that would bury just some of the lines, and eliminate 60 percent of outages, would cost $1.6 billion.

As it turns out, D.C. isn't exceptional in this regard. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has just released a primeron the cost of burying power lines across the country. What's striking is how wildly the costs for underground lines can differ, depending on the area. In some regions, it's almost as cheap to bury lines as it is to string them from poles. In other areas, the cost of underground wires is much, much higher:


On average, EIA found, underground lines can cost five to ten times more to build, per mile, than overhead lines. And that's only construction. Utilities also have to dismantle the overhead wires when making the conversions. What's more, repair costs can be higher for the underground lines — they don't last as long and have to be dug up when they get old or break. The underground lines are also more vulnerable to flooding. But those costs need to be weighed against the (often steep) cost of blackouts. And overhead wires are more vulnerable during storms.

So different cities have made different calls on whether or not to bury lines. The EIA notes that many denser urban areas, like Manhattan, have figure out how to bury lines relatively cheaply—especially in places where construction crews are already digging anyway for new buildings. And some cities are willing to bear the cost: Anaheim, Calif., for one, has decided to bury all its lines for aesthetic reasons, funded by a 4 percent surcharge on customers. But in other places, like parts of Colorado (which has granite bedrock) or parts of Florida (where the water table is higher), the price tag can prove a formidable obstacle.

All told, the Edison Electric Institute estimates (pdf) that some 18 percent of the country's distribution lines are buried. For the transmission system, only about 0.5 percent of lines sit beneath the surface. "Undergrounding an entire power system," says EIA, "is considered cost prohibitive." Instead, most utilities will just try to bury a few key lines.

Yet there are also other options, the EIA notes, from hardening above-ground infrastructure at crucial junctures to "vegetation management" to smart grid technology that reroutes power when lines go down. Burying power lines isn't the only way to respond to a storm — and often it's not even the most effective strategy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.4c00c09493eb

All told, the Edison Electric Institute estimates (pdf) that some 18 percent of the country's distribution lines are buried. For the transmission system, only about 0.5 percent of lines sit beneath the surface. "Undergrounding an entire power system," says EIA, "is considered cost prohibitive." Instead, most utilities will just try to bury a few key lines.

You don't need to bury the transmission system. Those systems are few in number, constructed well to withstand most storms, and can be repaired quickly when they're damaged. Just the lines that distribute to homes and businesses directly, not the transmission lines that feed into substations.